BABE RUTH: World Series quest continues in Atlantic City

The Mercer East and Nottingham Babe Ruth 15-year-old all-stars will be spending most of their weekend at Atlantic City, but there won’t be any trips to the beach.

Instead the two District 1 (Mercer County) teams will be busy on the baseball diamond, hoping to take the final steps on the road to a Babe Ruth World Series appearance.

Having qualified for the Middle Atlantic Regional tournament as the second and third place finishers from the recent Southern New Jersey state tournament, the two local teams return to competition today with first round games - weather permitting.

Both teams are entered in Pool B of the 10-team round-robin playoffs.

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Nottingham will open against Pennsylvania qualifier West End from Williamsport at 1 p.m. at Sandcastle Stadium outside Atlantic City, while Mercer East plays 15 miles away at 4 p.m. against Western New York qualifier North Syracuse.

Both games will be broadcast by the WBCB Sports Network on WRRC ‘The Bronc’ (107.7 FM) following The Trentonian Pregame Show.

Each team is guaranteed to play four games between today and Monday, needing to finish at least third in their pool to advance to the quarterfinals Tuesday morning.

The eventual region champ qualifies to play in the Babe Ruth 15-year old World Series that will be played in Purcellville (Va.) Babe Ruth and hosted by Loudon County - west of Washington, D.C. starting Aug. 15

The other Pool B entry is Metro New York champ South Shore from Staten Island, while Pool A includes the host team and Southern N.J. champ Atlantic Shore, Northern N.J. winner Basking Ridge, Maryland qualifier Frederick County, Eastern N.Y. winner North Colonie and Delaware champ Piedmont.

Manager Bill Wilmer’s Hightstown-based Mercer East squad, which goes to the regional at 8-3 after winning four of five games to take District 1 and four of six to be the SNJ runnerup to Atlantic Shore, is expected to send Matt D’Ambrosia to the mound against West End.

D’Ambrosia was 3-0 in the districts but didn’t get a win in the SNJ series where Jack Zosulis was 2-0 with Jacob Simon (1-0) and Michael Griffin (1-1) pitching the other wins for a team with a combined 2.98 earned run average.

It will need to match those numbers against a North Syracuse team that won the regional, and eventually the World Series the last time it came to a regional in Jersey - in 2010 at West Windsor.

Anthony Francioso’s Nottingham team hopes to continue the tradition it’s league has built in 23 years in Babe Ruth. Nottingham is the last District 1 team to get to a World Series - winning in 2007 and ‘08.

It went 2-2 in the distict three weeks ago to finish fourth then bounced back to go 4-2 in the states, losing to the other MAR qulifiers - Atlantic Shore (2-1) and Mercer East (11-3).